She couldn't count all the times she thought of her father since the day he left her.
She tried not to. When she stood alone in the middle of a training ground, when she secluded herself in the Forest of Death to hide Kubikiribocho, when she passed flower shops and seafood markets and watched bodies of water—she tried not to think because she didn't want to imagine what it would have been like to make him proud.
Her memory was a gift and a curse, because when she could recall information from stacks of scrolls she could also envision all the times her father looked down at her and smiled and told her he loved her.
She wanted to forget it all.
But she knew this was the life that would never give her all the things she wanted.
Maybe she shouldn't have come. Forget she ever came back here. Avoid her father for as long as she could possibly get away with.
Then the door burst open, and something hit the ground with a resounding thud.
Sakura closed the book in her hands and quietly tucked it back on the shelf. There wasn't any dust on her fingers or the book spines or the spaces between the pages, and it was all still organized just as she'd left it eight years ago—first by color, then alphabetical order by title.
"... Pup?"
A white hot pain lanced through her chest.
Pup. Right, that's what he'd called her when he tied her hair, made her breakfast, taught her katas, colored with her, made her memorize, made her laugh, told her he'd never leave—
"I'm... sorry if I tracked water into your apartment," she said when nothing else lined up on her tongue. Her throat strained and her mouth dried, and she didn't turn around to face him. Won't. Can't. "I just stopped by to see the old room."
The silence slowly started to strangle her as she waited for a response. Maybe it was only thirty or so seconds she had to wait, but those thirty seconds turned into thirty lifetimes when everything finally settled at the back of her head.
She was back in Ame, standing in the room she grew up in, and her father was here and real and the first thing she said to him after eight fire-filled years was nothing that had plagued her every time she went to sleep at night.
"Ours."
She blinked, but still didn't turn. "What?"
"It's still our apartment," he answered softly. "Doesn't matter how long you've been gone, it's always been ours."
Something hot pricked the corners of her eyes, but she took a deep breath and willed her breathing to even. One of her fingers came up to trace the junction between her upper arm and her prosthetic, a steady reminder of all the days she'd spent without giving her connected chakra pathways a break as the wood and metal soaked in infused rain. She'd have to do maintenance soon.
"Pup, I..." A long sigh. She could imagine him running a hand over his face. "How're—How're you here?"
It was tempting to bite back with snark. She almost gave into it, but.
"There was nowhere for us to go. Ame has always protected her criminals and refugees as long as that respect is returned to her." She exhaled shortly through her nose. "I pled asylum and it was granted, and my team and I will be staying at the pangolin complexes at the west side of the Pillar." Not that she'd been to their assigned complex yet. She heard that Kiba and Kurenai had moved in the morning after she saw them last, and Shino had moved there just yesterday and—how many days has it been? She'd been lost in a sea of paperwork and cataloguing every alleyway, every shrine, every drop of neon paint and their hidden meanings, all while Konan requested her accompaniment on her duties until she was to report back to the Divine Pillar to receive her full orders. "I thought I should let you know."
And finally, finally, she turned and met her father's wide eyes.
She committed his fresh face to memory and noted all his little changes, like the small scars that criss-crossed just above his right eyebrow and the one or two weary lines at the corner of his eyes. His forehead was creased and his beady black eyes shone under the warm yellow lights—
He was so much older now, but... but she never noticed how young he was. Is.
He was seventeen when he had you.
He was twenty-four when he left you.
Kisame took a small step forward and on instinct, Sakura took a measured step back, the heel of her sandals bumping against the bookcase and her hand flexing over the kunai pouch on her thigh. He froze, brows pulling together as he started to speak, but at the last second he thought better of it, shut his mouth, and swallowed.
Another trail of silence wound them by.
She felt his gaze burn into her, lingering on her claw marks, her face tattoo, the bandages wrapped securely around her left arm so that only skin could be seen. She remembered always craning her neck up to see him and raising her arms so that he'd swing her around and drop her on his shoulders; she'd felt like she was so on top of her small world, just her and her father and the rain.
It had been a long time since then.
She didn't have to look up to him anymore.
A new resolve built up from the pit of her stomach, cold and bitter and furious that flooded her veins and left her angry.
She'd been safe in the Akatsuki, hadn't she? It wouldn't have mattered that what they were doing and it wouldn't have mattered if they were all criminals. If she stayed she wouldn't have met Kiba or Akamaru or Shino or Kurenai or Tenzo or Kotetsu or Kankuro or Naruto—she wouldn't have grown to care for them, she wouldn't have grown to love them. If she stayed, she wouldn't have ruined Pack's lives because she was a foreign kid who knew just too damn much. If she stayed, she could've been stronger here and not have to remember how Bee-sama and Motoi-san took her under their wings and told her to run before the Raikage could catch her. If she stayed, she wouldn't have spent sleepless nights watching Kankuro build her a new arm because he wanted to, not because he had to.
If she stayed, everything wouldn't have hurt so much, and she wouldn't be standing in this room wishing she was anywhere but here.
"Pup," he tried again. She shook her head, green eyes piercing.
"Don't," she said, forcing the shakiness out of her breath and holding her ground. "Don't call me that anymore."
How can you still call me that after everything?
Kisame's brow scrunched up, pained for a split second before a humorless smile tugged at his lips as he glanced to the side. "Yeah, you're not a little kid anymore, huh?" He was quick to turn back to her, though, like she'd disappear if he spent too much time looking away. "You've... You've grown."
"... Yeah."
And it was back to silence.
Sakura stared out the window and at the rain tapping against the glass. So many things were building up in her throat, threatening to burst at the seams, but she didn't know why she couldn't say any of them. Why couldn't she? They were there and she wanted to scream, demand all the answers to all her questions and all she was doing was standing there like a damn idiot trying not to cry.
The clock that constantly ran at the back of her head—a clock that manifested itself in that Coliseum counting seconds between food, quotas, dead bodies, sky cycles—chimed faintly, and that selfish part of her couldn't have asked for a better excuse.
"I have to go," she said, and he shifted. "Leader-sama is expecting me, and I'll be receiving my orders."
"Wait, you're receiving orders from him?" When she didn't immediately answer, his jaw strained. "Leader-sama never gives direct orders to refugees, even the mission assignments get handled by the R4s—"
Right, the R4s. The shinobi that rank directly above Jounin, the R3s, as the ranks went so on and so forth to the civilians who held the R0 designation. No one ranked higher than the RAs, of course, considering how only Akatsuki-affiliates were granted that ID, but...
Sakura watched as the gears turned in his head as he kept talking until he realized, then as he trailed off until his lips were pressed into a thin line.
Silence, and rain.
Then he cast down his eyes, and whispered, "I never wanted this for you."
When she was young, there'd been something... somber about the man in front of her. He always smiled and grinned whenever she was around, but when she peeked up at him through her hair when he thought she was reading, his eyes grew shadowed and faraway as the lingered on the orange candles he kept around the house but never lit. He hugged her every day he saw her—a bit tighter on the days he left for and came back from missions—and never once raised a hand or his voice or his doubts. But, he had this heaviness around his shoulders he always tried to hide, but that she'd seen anyway.
All these years later, it was still there. She was older now. She was stronger now.
And now that heaviness was on her shoulders, too.
It must run in the family.
"I know," she said. She glanced out the window again; she really needed to go. "I never wanted this for me either."
Sakura forced herself to take one step forward, followed by another, then another, and she was striding across the room with her chin held high and her eyes straight ahead. She brushed past her father without another look—she won't she can't she can't—and made it just out of the doorway before she heard him speak again.
"I never wanted you to turn into someone like me."
Pretty cloud-covered cloaks. Too many promises. Too many secrets.
Her fingers curled into her palms. "You're the last person I ever want to be."
She shunshinned out of the apartment—
(—and just like the last eight years, he let her go.)
:: ::
He'd been looking forward to today.
There weren't many things that either caught him off guard or garnered his singular attention, but the events that unraveled over the last few days had captured both and now here he was, papers on the desk in front of him and his mind floating elsewhere.
Utilizing a body that wasn't his to begin with had been a novel experience for a long time. It was disorienting at first, grappling with the morality of puppeteering corpses and looking through the eyes of a dead dear friend, but thoughts like those faded with the years of rain and gray and red-lined clouds. He'd gotten used to the detachment. The separation. The disjoint.
For so long it had been nothing but Konan's melancholy eyes and the cold wash of overhead storms—when Sakura had first been born, she had been a small shift in his plans, a side thought to consider. Nothing more. And when she died, he'd simply gone back to the plans that pre-dated her. Her loss was a blow to his ranks, but an obstacle was only ever meant to be overcome.
Then, eight years later, the grown up ghost of a little girl returned with a request, a spine of steel, and a bowed head.
Nagato hummed and considered the rain.
He felt old. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why this unprecedented little occurrence was so...
He tilted his head, gaze flitting over to the office door as he laced his fingers across his front and settled in his chair. "Enter."
And in came the tempest.
She looked so much like he did upon her first appearance a few days ago—black pants, navy shirt, swathes of bandages around her arms, pink hair short and framing those dark green eyes. Water clung to her clothes and shone on her skin, dripping down old scars as she walked to the center of the room.
"Good morning, Leader-sama," she greeted with a bow. Strong posture, strong voice. That confidence she'd surprised him with that first day was a constant, then. Very good. "How may I be of service?"
But with that strength came her undeniable tension. With a locked jaw and squared shoulders, she was rigid as her gaze never dropped like those cowed, reverent gazes the rest of Amegakure saved for God and His Angel. The Akatsuki knew how to treat him with respect, even Hidan with his mouth and Kakuzu with his temper, but their fears didn't stem from the organization they were a part of.
Nagato wasn't blind, unknowing, nor willfully ignorant. What sort of Leader was he if he had been? Everyone had their own poisonous fears. He saw it in Deidara's hatred of the Uchiha, Sasori's obsession with preservation, the way Itachi pressed a hand to his chest when he thought no one else could be looking—these were things that could be manipulated and tugged on, led around his plans to ensure a well oiled machine that was loyal enough to listen regardless if they truly believed in his vision or not.
But Sakura?
It was him she feared, and she didn't hide it well.
He nodded towards the divan bench about a foot away from the other end of his desk, its deep orange cushions embroidered in gold marches and its dark wooden frame carved with images of cranes devouring toads.
Sakura wordlessly took a seat. Her back remained ramrod straight as her feet planted themselves shoulders-width apart.
"You have been attending to Konan well," he said. He moved a sheet of paper aside and ran his ringed eyes across the lines that required his approval. "You follow instructions quickly, precisely, and your RA status has been fully reinstated and recognized within the village."
Her jaw clenched tighter.
He moved his attention to another sheaf of papers. "Does that displease you?"
"No, sir."
"Your body language would suggest otherwise."
"I... would rather not be seen as a figure of higher standing, Leader-sama," Sakura answered as she kept her palms pressed against her knees. "I had only come here as a shinobi to be utilized under your command and to plead asylum for my team. The recognition comes with being recognized as an RA, I understand..." She drew in a short breath and let it go. "I prefer to complete my duties quietly."
"But you will complete them regardless of this circumstance?"
"Yes, sir. Whatever is necessary."
Nagato looked up.
He remembered the days she spent in his office when she had yet to understand the gravity of who she was and who she would have to be. As a baby she'd crawl atop her blankets or gnaw on plastic toys, or there were those times when she'd whimper until he would relent and let her sit on his lap as he worked. As a toddler she'd occupied herself with the books on his shelves, whether or not she actually understood them wasn't something he concerned himself with. As long as it kept her busy.
He would admit to seeing her so different—so much older—was just as jarring as it was fascinating.
There was just so much for him to pick apart piece by piece.
"Your return, while not unwelcome, has brought many questions," he told her, and watched as one of her fingers twitched against the material of her pants. "You were taken to Konoha at a young enough age that if your loyalties had been swayed, it would have been one of the realistic outcomes I have come to expect. Yet you have no love for it, and now you've fled them with their false accusations on your shoulders."
Nagato pulled out a nondescript journal about the size of his hand. The covers were some sort of black leather and the spine spiraled with an equally dark metal, and he felt her eyes tracing his every movement as he turned the waterproofed pages.
"Sakura, no surname," he read off once he found his place. She stiffened. "Affiliation currently unknown, swordsmanship and taijutsu specialty. Aided and abetted in: two counts of assault and attempted murder of Konoha chuunin, two counts of first degree murder, one count of theft of the confidential level. This shinobi has committed treason against the village by failing to uphold their loyalties and the title of honorable shinobi. Wanted dead or alive."
When his gaze flickered back up to her, fascination swirled just beneath the dead skin he wore. He watched that fear and hunched energy drain from her face, leaving a stone cold mask in its wake and green irises he'd never seen so empty.
"This is careless work, and you were never trained to be sloppy."
Something deep within her snapped back into place.
"If something is careless work, then it isn't mine, sir," she answered respectfully—with Konan's eyes, with Kakuzu's reserve, with nothing of her own father—and those rivulets of fear that had run through dark irises had faded so much that if he hadn't been so keen on her unease, he wouldn't have noted it to begin with. "I know nothing of the two counts of assault or the theft, and I suspect Tenzo-san is one of the listed 'murders.' If I had committed any of those crimes—" cold, assuring confidence leaked into a shadow of a smile— "then I would have never been caught."
He had no backup for her claim, but he had no reason to doubt her. Lying about her skills would only get her killed, as distasteful as that may be to both Konan and Kisame.
But Sakura had already died once. Should it happen again...
Nagato tapped the page with a finger. "The counts of assault were against two chuunin: Hagane Kotetsu and Umino Iruka. What is the significance of those names?"
And just like that, that small smile was gone.
"Hagane Kotetsu was my other mentor aside from Kurenai-sensei. I visited him the night we left." She frowned. "And Umino Iruka is an Academy teacher who helped Kiba with his seal techniques. If Tenzo-san was supposed to be one of the murders and Aoba-san had coincidentally witnessed the murder of Aburame-san..."
One of Nagato's brows raised. Framed for crimes we did not commit, he remembered her saying the day she arrived. It was nowhere near the most outlandish thing he'd ever heard, and the great nations had always been rife with corruption and underhanded politics and inflated self worth; Konoha being the softest of the five largest shinobi villages didn't mean they were any less rotten, but he couldn't quite pick out how she fell into this ever-unfinished puzzle.
Her bingo book entry was clear that they'd never learned of her roots. She was a Sakura with No Surname, probably figured to be a wanderer's daughter or a civilian or someone in between. On paper she was nothing special, and that alone had already proven how much she'd hidden from whom she was supposed to serve.
She was only chuunin rank and all the names she had mentioned save for Aburame didn't ring a clear bell in his head. By all accounts she shouldn't have been capable of doing anything requiring drastic rebuttal, yet whoever had pulled the frame job had been so careful to only pull in those from, in what he was assuming, was her and her team's inner circle.
Earlier, Konan informed him of the information Yuuhi willingly gave: this Tenzo had been dying in a bathroom, the Sandaime Hokage sent mercenaries after genin and failed, then tried to nullify their participation in the Chuunin Exams and failed again. If true, this team's resilience made it easier to note their survival during their long-term captivity under Kumogakure.
"And I believe," Konan brought up after, "that if Orochimaru had not murdered Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sakura and her team would have done it themselves."
So that left the question,
"Why you?"
Sakura ripped herself out of her mutterings, her back still straight but her attention solely on him. "Sir?"
"To whom Konoha decided was worth the trouble of framing."
Because when he looked at all the details from her story, Yuuhi's declaration, Konan's observations, there had to be very few people that recognized the source of the rot. In the midst of all the commotion and alleged crimes, witnesses had been left—specifically witnesses that had clear ties to Sakura and her team. Mentors attacked by their students, an Aburame unknown to him that had ended up dead.
It was convenient. Perhaps at this very moment, Konoha was spinning a story of chuunin rampaging on a psychotic break. They were shinobi after all, so far gone in blood and deceit that they simply hadn't been strong enough to push through; it happened to enough of those who weren't cut out for the life.
But if they had known Sakura as well as they should have, they would have seen that this life was the only one where she was meant to thrive.
"If I had committed any of those crimes, I would have never been caught."
"Because I was the one who killed Sasori-san."
"When you kill me..."
"We've never been lucky, and we could never stay dead," she said. There was that we again, so attached to this team when not so long ago her whole world would fit in her father's shadow. "That was enough of a reason for them."
Nagato shut the book and set it aside. People have been killed for less.
"You say you will do whatever is necessary to complete your duties," he mentioned as he stood. He held out a hand when Sakura moved to follow and, reluctantly, she resumed her rigid stance to remain seated on the orange cushion. "But I wonder what duties you align yourself with in regards to your ethics, morals, ideas of the like. You have spent many of your developing years in a village much different than this one." He clasped his hands behind his back as he stared out one of his arching windows, the rain taking a heavier turn. "You will answer me honestly."
"Yes, sir."
"Being born into this organization is a... unique circumstance. You were neither scouted for your skill nor your beliefs, leaving you bound by blood rather than choice. An interesting predicament, but a predicament nonetheless."
He turned back toward her, sure to have his ringed eyes in full view. She met them with little hesitation, and it made him curious to see if she would have such a mannerism if Konoha had never taken her.
"We collect the tailed beasts, and by extension, the jinchuuriki," he stated. "If I sent you on such a mission, is this an order you would be willing to follow?"
She was silent for a moment.
And.
"No, sir."
Then, she waited.
Her muscles tensed and fingers grasped her knees until her visible knuckle grew white. It was obvious to her that this wasn't the answer he wanted; she waited for a reprimand or a spike through her chest, eyes raised and chin level and it was like she was on death row with enough pride still intact.
Nagato was the God of his village. Divinity will always inspire fear, though he wasn't too sure that was what was turning her blood to ice.
"I will not allow for you to interfere with our goals," he started, and her jaw locked in anticipation for a strike, "so you will be utilized elsewhere." Sakura's brow scrunched together instantly. "You will continue to follow Konan's orders the majority of the time, but your duties would include, but not limited to: mediating disputes, gathering information, representing the current authority."
Her eyes darted across his face, her disbelief mingling with the dark bags just above her cheeks. He was never known to be accommodating, especially with something as frustratingly simple as the Akatsuki's main operation, but again she never had the chance to learn the true idea of peace. She'd been too young and too caught up in basic training and above-average textbooks to try.
But she had come home to Amegakure to plead asylum, not join his ranks. She'd been chewed up and spit out by Konoha's corruption—whatever the definition—been locked up in Kumogakure, had been handing him a knife over and over as she stuck out her neck from him to drive down the blade if it meant keeping a flock of Konohans safe.
Hoshigaki Sakura was an unknown on the playing field who'd been strong enough to witness the life leak out of Sasori's wooden body. If she had no desire to uphold Akatsuki's goals, then fine.
Nagato walked half a circle until he stood where the brand on the back of her neck sticks out in all its raised silvery-white glory. Back when she spent time in this office as a child, she'd always been enamored with the books on the shelves and their crisp, clean pages. She loved reading anything that could count as a story, and now she was made up of a thousand of her own.
He wondered.
"Aside from your obligations to Konan, you will return to this office on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Evening, when the downpour grows its heaviest." Some muscles in her neck tensed further, but she kept her gaze ahead. "Expect to offer a few hours of your time."
"Yes, sir."
(Nowhere to run.)
"Emergencies and assigned missions are your only excuses for an absence."
"Yes, sir."
(Nowhere to hide.)
"And Sakura."
This office had always been rather dark. The black ash wood of his desk was polished and neat, matched with the shelves that lined the wall to its left as it faced the floor-to-ceiling windows that shot up and curved down one, two, three times to let cloud light pour in through the rain darkened glass. Yellow bulbs burned behind his desk, light spilling through the wrought iron that twisted and curled out from the walls.
Sakura's fingers twitched against her leg as she inclined her head. "Yes, sir?"
(I am Akatsuki's.)
Never lucky and never dead. How terrible a fate for the one Kisame loved most.
"May the rain bring you peace." Nagato brought one hand up to her unscarred ear and pressed his fingers against palepalerpaling skin. "And may this blessing I bestow upon you, Hoshigaki Sakura, lead you far off the path of your sorrows."
:: ::
He hadn't seen Sakura the last couple of days, and it'd been quiet.
He, Akamaru, and sensei had been the only ones to check out the housing unit they'd been given that morning with Shino still bedridden and Tenzo recovering, and he was sort of... surprised with their accommodations. Konan arrived looking just as she did the day before, blank-faced and poised and alone, and led them through the downpour to a pair of dark walled buildings in a rather secluded neighborhood where only one or two shinobi had been around to bow as they passed by.
The attached units were tall and thin with a pair of polished red doors on opposite ends of the front, and the windows he could see were too dark to peer through.
"The residence on the right is for your use," Konan had first informed Kurenai before glancing at Kiba and Akamaru. "And the residence on the left is for you. A key will be granted to Aburame-san upon his dispatch, and Sakura is already in possession of hers."
"And where is Sakura?"
"She is currently on assignment," Konan answered smoothly, staring straight into his eyes. It took all he had in him not to look away. "I cannot say when she will be available, but she will return soon."
She'd better, else he'd upturn the entire goddamn village to make sure she was alright.
The woman continued, gesturing down the path they'd just walked and toward the tower. "From your housing units, facing the Pillar is facing East. South you will find the commercial, market, and civilian districts, further east is the business district, and North contains training grounds and other sorts where shinobi tend to congregate." She glanced back at them. "We are currently in the Pangolin Complexes, populated solely by shinobi and scattered this West side. And, as you all are now supplementary to Sakura's RA status, you will be granted certain accesses and clearances. This is a privilege, do not abuse it."
The concern in Kurenai's face was pinched and confused, but she held it all together for her own sake.
Kiba had accustomed himself to the scents around him, committing to memory the rain musk and brick and paint of the neon orange pangolins that ran about underfoot. Konan hadn't said much, handing him and sensei each a ring of keys before she'd excused herself and disappeared between droplets of rain. He and Kurenai had looked at each other then, before breaking off to sweep each unit and agreeing to get back together in fifteen minutes.
But whatever he was expecting, it wasn't this.
Akamaru stayed right at his hip as he pushed open the front door and took a cautious step inside. Immediately, they were met with a soft cream colored entrance hall that led past a large, open living room. Ornate wooden benches cushioned in browns, oranges, and yellows lined the walls and in front of the amber colored curtains.
Kiba's brows rose as he stepped up to the wooden bench that boxed in the space, suspended from iron chains attached to the ceiling. A golden rug embroidered with elephants was laid in the center atop the red floors, and on it was a low, dark wood coffee table with four rust-colored sitting pillows half-tucked beneath it.
A small angel statuette was poised on the table. There was an origami flower in her hair.
"Uh... this is... nice?"
"Nicer than I expected."
"Way nicer than I expected," Kiba agreed. When he walked further into the house, he saw a section of white tile just a bit smaller than the living room itself. Devil's ivy lined the border and directly in the center was some large marble bowl about as tall as his thighs and as wide as half his arm span, filled with crystal clear water and lotus flowers—an indoor courtyard? Up above there lay a skylight framed with seals and allowing a perfect view of gray skies and rain. "I mean, I guess we're not prisoners, so...?"
"We're still criminals," Akamaru reminded dryly as he nosed at the devil's ivy. Fresh. Well-taken care of. "Though I suppose that doesn't matter much to them, considering."
Kiba poked his head into the kitchen where the red floors continued. It was easily at least three times the size of the clunky kitchen in Sakura's old apartment, and the dining set wasn't the foldable white plastic he'd gotten used to. The table was a circular glass top surrounded by traditional solid wood chairs, and it sat next to the matching wooden staircase with a raised base and a landing filled with stones and another metal statuette, this time of a pangolin not unlike the ones painted outside.
He scratched the back of his head. "You're tellin' me."
Upstairs, the floors were made of the same wood as the stairs. Three rooms, identical beds covered in dark reds and orange-browns and so much space he didn't know what to do with. Their things, everything they scrapped together before running from Konoha without looking back, had been neatly piled on the wooden window seat at the end of the second floor hall.
"Okay so, nice place. Can't smell anythin' off. And we're in the middle of the village Sakura grew up in because we had to ask for the Akatsuki's help. Y'know, the one with the world's most dangerous criminals," Kiba mumbled as he headed back down the stairs while rubbing his forehead. He sighed and slumped onto one of the last few steps. "Great."
Akamaru padded over to his partner and plopped next to him with a bone-tired sigh.
They let the silence overtake them for a moment as gravity finally hit and dragged them through the weight of the past few days. Days. It had only taken days for everything to fall apart and explode into millions of pieces that they couldn't have a hope of trying to pick back up. Not that they'd have a chance of doing it anyway; whatever that bastard Danzo did, however he managed to even do it—it probably worked because it was so different than all the ways he tried before.
"He was so fuckin' smart about it too," Kiba sighed. "Everythin' before it was... was all underground. Secret labs, mercenaries in the middle a' nowhere, Kumo." He huffed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "God, Kumo. Remember that?"
"Of course," Akamaru sighs. "We were almost happy there."
He wished 'almost' was enough for them.
All of that felt so far away now the moment the other shoe dropped. In an instant, everything they knew was gone. Aburame Torune was dead and Unlucky Eight probably was to blame because of course they were. A public death witnessed by one of their allies who couldn't dispute it—what a goddamn play. He was going to tear that motherfucker limb from limb, strip every muscle from every bone, carve his screams into the white of his ribs.
Danzo was going to die.
But he would think on it later when his brain wasn't mush and his heart hurt less.
"I'm worried. About Sakura."
"I'd be worried if you weren't," Akamaru bowed his head. "The way she followed Tenshi-sama's orders and how Tenshi-sama allowed her to call her by her real name... She never even listened to the Academy teachers like that." His tail swished as he pawed at the polished gloss of the red floor. "I... think Tenshi-sama is her mother."
"What? She said she never met her. She died giving birth—"
"I know, but her father's been in the Akatsuki since before she was born, right? Before anything was known about the organization itself, it had never been correlated with Amegakure because of how little they were actually seen coming in and out of the village."
"So what you're gettin' at is if Hoshigaki Kisame was out doin' business and Tenshi-sama's practically the face of authority that rarely leaves Ame..."
"It makes sense if Tenshi-sama helped raise Sakura," the ninken said. "They look too much alike."
Kiba pinched the bridge of his nose. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
"Tenshi-sama is sort of kind, isn't she?" Kurenai walked over to them with her arms crossed tightly around her middle and a small, comforting smile on her face. Her hair was damp and she must've left her cloak back in her unit. "I think she fitted one of the rooms on my side into a nursery."
He blinked. "Oh, wow."
"Yeah."
He scooted so she could lower herself down on the same step, and another bout of silence engulfed them. She glanced at their courtyard and the flush green plants around it as she took his wrist and gave it a light squeeze.
"I know you have a lotta questions, sensei, but I—we all have to be here to answer 'em. 'specially Sakura."
"I understand." Kurenai squeezed tighter. "As long as you're all safe, I'll wait as long as you need."
If only she knew exactly how long, because Sakura didn't come the next day. Or the day after that.
When Shino was finally released from the hospital, Kiba hugged him and didn't let go for what seemed like an eternity. They sat on a cushioned bench that didn't have its back to the window, squished against each other as Akamaru stretched over their laps, as they spoke in low tones. Had the perimeter been scouted? What were the best escape routes out of the village? Have there been any other Akatsuki sightings? Have they come up with the code for the art? Was Tenzo stable?
Where was Sakura?
They talked for hours.
She didn't come back that day either.
But it was sometime in the next early afternoon that something finally shifted. Kiba and Shino were at the dining table with stacks of books between them as they ate, the former bouncing his leg and the latter half-watching his tea grow cold, when the front door clicked open. Akamaru lifted his head from his spot laying near the stairs, and after a second he shot forward towards the door with a high-pitched bark.
The teens exchanged startled glances before pushing themselves out of their seats and rushing to the hall just in time to see the door wide open and Sakura kneeling down to catch Akamaru, wrapping her arms around his neck as she buried her face in his fur.
Kiba was the first to react.
"I'M GONNA MURDER YOUR ASS!"
He collapsed on her left and wrapped an arm around her neck to tug her close and bring her head under his chin. Relief flooded through him like nothing else, but a softer anger was quick to come after.
"Do you know how fuckin' worried we were?" he whispered into her hair. Shino settled down to her right, and it was only because his glasses were off that Kiba saw his eye widen before a hand flared green against her right ear. "You've been gone for so long and I know you were with Tenshi-sama, but she wouldn't tell us where you were—"
Akamaru whined, and he looked down at Sakura's right hand.
She was shaking.
"Sakura?" Shino murmured. His healing chakra died out and he inspected her ear with a ginger touch. There was a black metal bar stuck in the cartilage of her ear, an industrial piercing he believed they were called, and a black plug of the same material in her lobe. "What happened?"
"... I'm sorry."
Akamaru whined again and pulled away, and Shino tucked some of her hair back. Her eyes were glassy and wide and unseeing, some rain drops slipping from her hairline down her face.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes bruised with sleepless bags. "I'm sorry."
The first time Team Eight saw Sakura cry, harsh rain echoed on painted concrete.
:: ::
Konan found him in the soft glow of newly-changed ceiling lights, slumped on the floor of Sakura's old room with Samehada at his side and his arms propped up on his knees as he held onto a small plush shark. She tucked her legs under her as she took a seat right beside him.
"She's so big now," he said.
"And quite intelligent," she added. "I've only spent a few days with her, but all her work is carried out quickly and efficiently. She's strong, confident, deadly." Her voice softened. "You should be proud."
"Proud, eh?"
"You're the last person I ever want to be."
"No need to tell me somethin' like that. I'll always be proud of her no matter what." Cold green eyes, a level chin, a back held ramrod straight— "For years, I dreamed what it'd be like if I ever saw her face to face again. My first instinct woulda' been to lift her up and swing her 'round like I always used to." His smile faltered. "She hates me."
"She doesn't hate you."
"She's got every right to. Maybe back then it was easier to keep her out of it, but now?" He ran a finger across one of the shark's beady little eyes. "We didn't talk much, but she said she came to plead asylum. She prob'ly knows all 'bout the Akatsuki, what we do, what we've done, and the only reason why she came back's 'cause she's a missing-nin who needs to keep safe."
Just like her old man.
Konan placed her hand on his bicep, her warmth seeping through his cloak. "You believed her to have died in that explosion, Kisame. How could you be held responsible for her ending up in Konoha?"
He bit the inside of his cheek and shut his eyes to soothe the burn behind them.
:: ::
And here we end with some amazing fanart by
frostmarris on tumblr!
kurageyan on tumblr!
icejade03 on instagram!
clowncunt on tumblr!
chodoodles on instagram!
and a graphic by willoafsi on tumblr!
:: ::
Also I uploaded a fic to accompany this amazing fanart of Sakura Haruno and Dean Winchester (yeah I know, don't even look at me) by frostmarris on tumblr! The fic is called (s)hell, and you can read on on here, AO3, and ff.net!